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As if there weren't already 100 different delicious reasons to go to BEAST Butcher & Block in the Grove (4156 Manchester Avenue, 314-944-6003), pitmaster and restaurateur David Sandusky is upping the ante with some new menu offerings. Last week, Sandusky and his team introduced Butcher's Burgers, a new line of butchery-influenced sandwiches that will make the restaurant a must-visit destination for area burger lovers.

A St. Louis jury awarded $6 million on Monday to the family of a woman who died of mesothelioma in 2019 after working at manufacturing centers in southwest Missouri.

by Heather Vogell

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The chair of a U.S. Senate committee asked the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday to review whether a Texas-based property tech company’s rent-setting software violates antitrust laws.

The move comes after ProPublica published an investigation Oct. 15 into RealPage’s pricing software, which suggests new rents daily to landlords for all available units in a building. Critics say the software may be helping big landlords operate as a cartel to push rents above competitive levels in some markets.

“Alarmingly, recent reporting by ProPublica highlighted that RealPage’s algorithm-based price optimization software, YieldStar, is being used by a growing number of property managers and landlords, potentially impacting pricing and the supply of homes in the rental market,” said the letter signed by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. “Renters should have the power to negotiate fairly priced housing, free from illicit collusion and deceptive pricing techniques.”

RealPage’s software applies a complex set of mathematical rules to a vast trove of data collected by the company from landlords who are its clients. That data includes the otherwise private data of nearby competitors.

“Troublingly, ProPublica reported that a former RealPage executive stated that the data could give insight into how competitors within a half-mile or mile radius are pricing their units,” said the letter, which was addressed to FTC chair Lina Khan.

RealPage has said the data fed into its pricing tool is anonymized and aggregated. It said the company “uses aggregated market data from a variety of sources in a legally compliant manner.”

In a statement Tuesday, the company said it had not seen the letter, “but we are always willing to engage with policy stakeholders to ensure they have the facts about the competitive dynamics of the housing market and the value and benefits that RealPage creates for renters and housing providers.”

Critics say the use of private data is one of the reasons the software invites scrutiny from antitrust enforcers such as the FTC. RealPage also claims its analytics “balance supply and demand to maximize revenue growth.” And the company organizes forums for competitors to meet and discuss aspects of its software, including its pricing algorithms. One legal expert told ProPublica that such collaborations “could raise an antitrust red flag.”

In one neighborhood in Seattle, ProPublica found, 70% of apartments were overseen by just 10 property managers, all of which used pricing software sold by RealPage in at least some of their buildings.

The Senate letter said the recent reporting on RealPage “raises serious concerns about collusion in the rental market.” It said “the FTC should review whether rent setting algorithms that analyze rent prices through the use of competitors’ private data, such as YieldStar, violate antitrust laws.”

RealPage said previously that its revenue management software prioritizes a property’s own internal supply and demand dynamics over external factors such as competitors’ rents. The software helps eliminate the risk of collusion that could occur with manual pricing, which often relies on phone surveys of competitor prices, the company said.

An FTC spokesperson said the agency does not comment on letters or requests from Congress.

The letter also raised concerns that the pricing software is potentially restricting the supply of apartments. It said that the national rental vacancy rate was just 5.6% at the end of 2021, the lowest since 1984. Even in the tight market, however, it said, there are reports that RealPage’s algorithm sometimes encourages property owners to keep units vacant or push tenants out to increase profits.

The letter cited ProPublica’s story, which quoted from a 2017 earnings call with RealPage’s then-CEO, Steve Winn. He explained how one large property company found it could increase profits by raising rents and leaving more apartments vacant.

Winn has not responded to requests for comment.

“Intentionally holding units vacant, when there are so few homes available, decreases a consumer’s negotiating power and exacerbates the housing shortage,” the letter said.

RealPage’s influence over apartment pricing has grown substantially in recent years, following its 2017 acquisition of its biggest pricing competitor, software called Lease RentOptions, or LRO, from The Rainmaker Group. RealPage was pricing 1.5 million units at the time, and the purchase allowed it to double that number. The Department of Justice’s antitrust division took a close look at the merger, but allowed it to proceed.

By 2020, RealPage had expanded its number of clients to 31,700 across all its products, which also include accounting, lease management and other software. Private equity firm Thoma Bravo bought RealPage last year for $10.2 billion. It now calls its pricing software AI Revenue Management.

After ProPublica published its investigation, a group of tenants filed a lawsuit against RealPage and nine of the country’s biggest landlords, alleging they were colluding to artificially inflate rents.

A RealPage spokesperson has denied the allegations and said the company “will vigorously defend against the lawsuit.” She declined to comment further, saying the company does not comment on pending litigation.

Will inflation affect Christmas and Christmas shopping for St. Louis residents?

It’s the first confirmed investigation of an alleged denial of an abortion to a woman experiencing a medical emergency.

From Rethinking The Future: A client invests in their project/s, but what if coordination problems with architects, engineers, consultants, and others occur? Who will help to fill the void that is coordination? A construction manager will be the bridge, and a Construction Management career is a correct path to follow. From the making of the pyramids […]

More pics at: https://www.randymanning.com/Alton-Halloween-Parade ALTON - The 105th Alton Halloween Parade was again one for residents to remember with a long group of floats and participants. The Grandpa Gang were well-deserved grand marshals of the parade. The Grandpa Gang each year decorates the Christmas Wonderland at Rock Spring Park with more than 2.5 million lights and donates profits to community organizations. The East End Improvement Association is the coordinator of the parade each year. The Alton Halloween Parade started at 7 p.m. Monday on Broadway and Washington and concluded on Piasa. Steve Schwartz, a spokesperson for East End Improvement Association said the parade was in a word, "fantastic." "We had some great float entries and a great crowd," he said. "The weather also held out and overall it was a very good parade. We were thankful to be able to honor the Grandpa Gang as the parade marshals. They do so much for the community."

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In a lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Labor alleges Rockwell Beer withheld tips from bartenders and owes them back wages.

From Industry Week: The skilled trades have been in a state of crisis for close to a decade, and this has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Only 70 out of 100 positions are being filled, translating into 2.4 million unfilled positions in manufacturing and an estimated $2.5 trillion of lost economic value over the past […]

A St. Louis family will receive $6 million in an asbestos lawsuit against the Ford Motor Company.

Small businesses in the United States are still facing many obstacles and struggling to stay afloat after the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re dealing with record inflation and a competitive job market where savvy talent is looking for solid benefits. One of the key issues is that rising health care costs may be keeping small businesses from finding the right people to power their operations. But that’s where brokers can come in and help. A survey from The Commonwealth Fund found 92% of the small…

From Re- Journal: Rising interest rates, soaring materials costs and the impact of inflation dominated much of the discussion during the 5th annual St. Louis Commercial Real Estate Summit held Oct. 20 at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac by REjournals. The event featured the top names in the St. Louis commercial real estate market, all of […]

From Ladue News: In August, the Foundation for Strengthening Families unveiled its plan to completely overhaul St. Louis’s West End neighborhood with the construction of a multibuilding, multimillion-dollar project. Dubbed the Show Me Family Zone, the effort will introduce programming and other services that are designed not only to rebuild the area but also to re-imagine […]

Arts organizations and artists in St. Louis city are about to get a big infusion of cash. This morning, Mayor Tishaura Jones announced that the City of St. Louis would allocate $10.6 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis through the passage of Board Bill 66. The funds, which are the third highest distribution of ARPA monies to the arts in the country, are intended to help the St. Louis arts and culture sector rebound from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There’s a drug panic underway and the DEA is to blame. Ever since the appearance of multi-colored fentanyl pills on the scene, the DEA has somehow managed to surpass its normal ridiculous hyperbole in public statements, making all sorts of absurd claims about this new threat to the youth of America. Couple this hysteria with […]

From St. Louis Business Journal: Construction is underway on the $200 million redevelopment of the former MetLife office campus in south St. Louis County, with a homebuilder selected to erect the first single-family houses at the site. First announced last year by St. Charles-based developer Propper Construction Services, the Tesson Ridge development at 13045 Tesson Ferry Road in unincorporated […]

A little after midnight, a St. Louis City Sheriff's deputy was robbed at gunpoint in Downtown West while wearing his full uniform. The 37-year-old deputy was leaving a second job when he had car issues in the 1400 block of Clark. As he waited for a tow truck, two individuals, described as Black males between the ages of 15 and 20, approached him, armed with firearms.

The Ultimate Excel VBA Certification Bundle has 13 courses to help you learn how to better work with Excel. Courses cover web automation, user forms, ActiveX, workbook-level events, and more. The bundle also includes one license for Microsoft Office Professional 2021. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated […]